New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
Computer and Information Science Department (CIS)
CIS677: Information System Principles, Spring 2000
Professor: Michael Bieber

Semester Project - Version 2 (2/20/2000)

Goal

A deeper exploration and discussion of each week's topic, and to encourage synthesis of concepts across the semester.

Project

This semester we will be building upon the semester project sites that were created last semester. Some were better than others, and the semester project teams this semester will be distributed with more members to the poorest sites. All of the sites should be brought up to high quality and include the features listed below. The projects from last semester are at (http://www.cis.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677F99/synthesis/).

Features

Starting with any materials from last semester you wish to keep, prepare a web site about your mentoring topic.

Your site should include the following information:

• definitions
• description of your topic
• relationship analysis of your topic (details forthcoming)
• examples (in the literature; on the Web, demos, etc.)
• summary of the topic's lecture
• synthesis (see the class materials resource page)
  - analyze your topic using the models, frameworks and concepts from every other topic
  - analyze the other topics using the models, frameworks and concepts from your topic
• *summary* of the topic's chunking from all conferences
  Don't repeat the chunks, just give a general overview of the things that people discussed in the chunks, and try to summarize these in some meaningful way.
• a reading list of articles relevant to the topic, with an abstract from each
  Note any articles that you would recommend to replace the existing assigned readings.
• a list of URLs of classes at other universities that cover your topic
• related research areas
• interesting related information
• TheBrain depiction (more details below)
• Relevant On-Campus Classes Semester Project Reports
  The on-campus classes have been assigned to link their final project reports into your Web Sites. They will be contacting you in the last few weeks of the class with suggestions of where to add links to their reports. Please work with them as much as possible. For more details see the on-campus semester project assignment.

How to Proceed

(1) Create a Web Site

You will be building your own Web site, hosted by one of your team members. For details on creating a Web site, see the "World Wide Web" heading on Computing Services documentation page: http://www.njit.edu/CSD/Docs/. (At the end of the semester, I will ask you to "zip up" your site, and I will post it to a central site for CIS677 - so be sure to use relative file names within your site so it can be moved without any changes to the links.)

Please send me the URL of your site, and I will add it to the synthesis page available from the course home page.

I will zip up the sites from last semester and post them soon, so you can download them all at once if you want to.

Don't be afraid to change anything from last semester, and don't feel that you must keep anything. You can start from scratch if you like.

(2) Download TheBrain

We're going to get an unlimited site license we all can share, but for now you can download (and share) limited personal versions from http://www.thebrain.com.

(3) Work Steadily

Don't wait till your week, or until the end of the semester! Start building your site now. Add to your site steadily across the semester.

(4) Disuss Anything Uncertain

On WebBoard we can discuss any aspect of this project in the "DL: Semester Project Discussion" conference.

(5) Check IS World

The IS World site, posted on the class home page, is a good starting place for research on several of the class' topics.

TheBrain Depiction

TheBrain is a tool for drawing an overview diagram. You can draw concepts as circles and then show which concepts are related by drawing arrows among the circles. The diagram should give someone an overview of a topic just by looking at the diagram.

Then you can add text to the concept circles, as well as link in Web pages.

I'd like to use TheBrain as an alternate way of presenting your topic. Do not simply use it for a table of contents, rather depicting the concepts in your topic and showing how they are related.

This is the first time we are using TheBrain, and I'm not sure what the results will be. Here are some of the questions you all will have to work out: What should each of these overviews look like? What level of depth should be in each? What content should we attach to each circle?

We will have two levels of TheBrain depictions. The first will be a general overview of CIS677's topics and themes, which everyone should participate in. The second will be a general depiction of your topic, which will be linked to the main overview.

Schedule

Proposal (by 3/7)

In the "DL: Semester Project Discussion" conference, please post a preliminary plan of what you will do in your Web Site.

Interim Review (3/28)

Every team should evaluate two other semester projects. Post your evaluation in the "DL: Semester Project Discussion" conference. Every team should evaluate the semester project sites for the two topics following theirs. So for example, the "Information Structure of Organizations" team will evaluate the sites for the "Decision Making/DSS" and "Human, Ethical and Societal Issues of IS" teams. The "Global IS" team will evaluate the sites for the "Information Structure of Organizations" and "Decision Making/DSS" teams.

Final Project Due (4/25 and 5/2)

Have your final project finished by 4/25. During the next week you can arrange links with the on-campus project teams. Post a zipped up version of your Web site in the "DL: Semester Project Discussion" conference.

This page: http://www.cis.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677F99/semester-project-dl.html